V
At the hospital, he went directly to the "zoo" in the basement. A knotof personnel, including Phyllis, Peterson, the toxicologist, andFeldman, opened to admit him to the cage under their inspection. A quickglance at the control cages showed no change in the undoctored monkeys.Males and females were paired off, huddling together miserably,chattering and sadly rubbing their heads together. Each couple eyed theother couples suspiciously. Even here, the overpossessiveness wasevident, and Murt cringed from the pitiful, disconsolate expressions.
The cage before him, however, appeared normally animated. The monks werefeeding and playing happily. Feldman was grinning. "Had to try a newderivative, Sylvester, but the sulfa series was the right approach."
Murt stared at the cage, redeyed. "Hadn't realized you succeeded inproducing the symptoms in monkeys."
Phyllis said, "Why, I gave you that report yester--" She broke off withan understanding glance.
Peterson was exclaiming, "I never saw such a rapid-acting remedy! And sofar, there's no evidence of toxic effect."
"It must absorb directly into the gland tissue," Feldman added. "Hardlyhad time to materially reduce the virus content significantly."
Murt murmured words of congratulations to them, turned on his heel andstalked out. Phyllis followed him to his office.
"Get me some of the stuff and notes on the dosages they administered,"he ordered.
"Certainly," she said. "But why didn't you ask--_Dr. Murt, you aren'tgoing to try it on yourself?_"
"Why not?" he barked hoarsely.
"It'll be weeks before we can determine if it's safe," she protested,horrified.
"We haven't got weeks. People are falling apart. This thing'scontagious."
Even while Murt said it, he felt it was the wrong approach. He knew hisown perspective was shot, but Phyllis would probably try to protect himagainst himself.
She did not. Instead, her face softened with sympathy and something elsehe refused to identify. She said, "I'll be right back."
* * * * *
The pressure in his head throbbed down his neck into his body. He wantedher so much, it was difficult to resist following her out into the hall.She returned in a few minutes with a 500-cc glass-stoppered reagentbottle half full of a milky fluid.
"Oral administration?" he asked.
She nodded. "Fifteen cc for the monkeys."
She secured a small beaker and a tapered graduate from the glasswarecabinet and set them before him. He poured 50 cc into the graduatedmeasure and transferred it to the beaker.
"What do they call it?" he asked.
"Sulfa-tetradine," she replied. "One of a series Peterson was testing.There is no physiological data on it yet. All he knows is that itinhibited the virus in culture. So they tried it on the monkeys."
Murt raised the beaker to his lips. It was against every sensible tenetof scientific procedure. He was amazed that Phyllis was silent as heswallowed the bland, chalky fluid. He heard a clink. Turning, he saw herraising the graduate to her lips. In it was a like quantity ofsulfa-tetradine.
"What are you doing?" he half-shouted. "We don't need a test-control!"
"I'm not a control," she said softly, touching her lips with a scrap ofgauze. "I've had the virus for months."
He stared at her unbelievingly. "How do you know?"
"One of the first test samples was my own blood," she said. "You saw it.It was one of the twelve positive."
"But the symptoms--you don't show a sign of--"
"Thanks," she said. "I started to break down yesterday, but you didn'tnotice. You see, you are my fixation and when you told me that you hadit, too, I--"
"_Your_ fixation!" The beaker slipped from his fingers and smashed tothe tile. "_You're in love with me?_"
Her arms hung loosely at her sides and tears rimmed her eyes."Pathologically or otherwise, I've been a case since before I startedthe blood tests."
They moved together and clung to each other. "Phyl, Phyl--why didn't youtell me?"
* * * * *
Fiercely, she closed his lips with her own, and her fingers dug deeplyinto his shoulders. His arms pulled her closer yet, trying to fill thevoid in him that was greater than the Universe. For a long minute, theknowledge of her love and physical contact with her straining bodydispelled the bleak loneliness.
When their lips parted, they gasped for breath.
It was no good. It was like tearing at an itching insect bite with yourfingernails. The relief was only momentary, and it left the woundbleeding and more irritated than ever. Even if they were married--lookat Peter at the club--Peter and his wife, mutually in love andcompletely miserable. It wasn't normal love. It was the damned virus!
As well argue with gravity. He tried to tell her, but he couldn't makeher understand. Her restraint had been magnificent, but when the dambroke, it was beyond stopping the flood of her emotion. And now hecouldn't believe it himself. Nothing this wonderful could be destroyedby mere misunderstanding. He cursed the years of his celibacy. All thattime wasted--lost!
It was six o'clock before they reached her apartment. The License Bureauhad been a mob scene. Hours more, upstairs in the City Hall waiting forthe judge, while they held hands like a pair of college sophomores,staring into each others' eyes, drinking, drinking the elixir ofadoration with a thirst that wouldn't be sated.
Phyllis weakened first. In the cab, after the ceremony, she released hishand and wiped her damp forehead.
Then, in the elevator, Murt felt himself relaxing. The alchemy ofsustained passion had exhausted them both, he decided.
As Phyllis slipped the key in the door, she looked up at him insurprise. "Do you know, I'm hungry. I'm starved--for the first time inmonths."
Murt discovered his own stomach was stirring with a prosaic pangfuldemand of its own. "We should have stopped to eat," he said, realizingthey had forgotten lunch.
"_Steaks!_ I have some beauties in my freezer!" Phyllis exclaimed. Theypeeled off their coats and she led him into the small kitchen. Shepointed at the cupboard and silverware drawer. "Set the table. We'll eatin five minutes."
* * * * *
Slipping into an apron, she explored the freezer for meat and Frenchfries, dropped them into the HF cooker and set the timer for 90 seconds.When it clicked off, she was emptying a transparent sack of preparedsalad into a bowl.
"Coffee will be ready in 50 seconds, so let's eat," she announced.
For minutes, they ate silently, ravenously, face to face in the littlebreakfast nook. Murt had forgotten the pure animal pleasure ofsatisfying a neglected appetite, and so, apparently, had his wife.
_Wife!_ The thought jolted him.
Their eyes met, and he knew that the same thing was in her mind.
The sulfa-tetradine!
With the edge barely off his hunger, he stopped eating. She did, too.They sipped the steaming coffee and looked at each other.
"I--feel better," Phyllis said at last.
"So do I."
"I mean--I feel differently."
He studied her face. It was new. The tenseness was gone and it was abeautiful face, with soft lips and intelligent eyes. But now the eyeswere merely friendly.
And it aroused no more than a casual pleasure in him, the pleasure ofviewing a lovely painting or a perfect sunset. A peaceful intellectualrapport settled over them, inducing a physical lethargy. They spokefreely of their sensations, of the hypo-adrenal effects, and wonderedthat there was no unpleasant reaction. They decided that, initially atleast, sulfa-tetradine was a miraculous success. Murt thought he shouldgo back to the hospital and work out a report right away.
Phyllis agreed and offered to accompany him, but he said she had betterget a night's sleep. The next day would be hectic.
After four hours at his desk, he called a taxi and, without hesitation,gave the address of his club. Not until he fell wearily into bed did heremember it was his wedding night.
>
By mutual agreement, the marriage was annulled the next day.
Feldman and Peterson were gratified at the efficacy of their drug, butboth were horrified that Murt had chosen to experiment on himself. Asusual, Phyl had insisted on being left out of the report.
* * * * *
After a week of close observation, one of the monkeys was chloroformedand tissue-by-tissue examination was made by an army of histologists.Blood samples showed completely clear of the virus, as did a recheck onMurt's own blood. No deleterious effects could be detected, so theresults were published through the Government Health Service.
It was the day before Christmas before Dr. Sylvester Murt first noticedthe approaching symptoms of a relapse, or reinfection--he couldn't guesswhich. The past weeks had been pleasantly busy and, as acclaimedauthority on Murt's virus, he had had little time to think subjectivelyabout his experience.
Sulfa-tetradine was now considered the specific for the affliction andwas being produced and shipped by the carload all over the world. Thepress had over-generously insisted on giving him all the credit for theremedy as well as the isolation of the disease virus. He was aninternational hero.
The warning of another attack came to him at 3:30 in the afternoon, whenPhyllis Sutton was leaving. She stuck her head back in the door and gavehim an uncommonly warm smile and cried, "Merry Christmas, Doctor!"
He waved at her and, as the door closed, caught his breath. There wasthe burn in his stomach again. It passed away and he refused to give itfurther thought.
His own cab wound its way through the heavy Christmas Eve traffic anhour before store-closing time. Finally, the vehicle stalled in a jam.It was only six blocks to his club, so Murt paid off the driver andwalked.
Part of his strategy of bachelorhood had been to ignore Christmas andthe other sentimental seasons, when loneliness costs many a man hisindependence. But now it was impossible to ignore the snowflakes, thebustling, package-laden crowds and the street-corner Santa Clauses withtheir tinkling bells.
* * * * *
He found himself staring into department store windows at the gaydecorations.
A pair of shimmering, nearly invisible nylons caught his eye. They werethe most impalpable of substances, only their bare outline visibleagainst the white background.
He thought of Phyllis and, on impulse, went into the store and bought apair. The clerk had to pick a size at random for him. Outside, on thesidewalk, he stared at the prettily gift-wrapped package and finallyacknowledged the tremor, the tension and the old ache in the region ofhis diaphragm.
_Relapse!_
He plodded three slushy blocks up a side-street before he found a cab.He gave Phyllis Sutton's address to the driver and sank back in the taxias a wave of weakness overcame him. What if she weren't home? It wasChristmas Eve. She would probably be visiting friends or relatives.
But she wasn't. She opened the door under his impatient knock, and hereyes widened cordially.
"Sylvester!" she exclaimed. "Merry Christmas! Is that for me?" Shepointed to the package, clutched forgotten in his hands.
"Merry, hell!" he said dispiritedly. "I came to warn you to look out fora relapse. Mine's been coming on all day."
She drew him inside, made him take off his coat and sit down before sheacknowledged his remark. The apartment was cozy, with a tiny Christmastree decorated in the window. She returned from the hall closet and satbeside him.
"Look what I did--on impulse," he said and tossed the package on herlap. "That's what really turned it on."
She opened the nylons and looked up at him sideways.
He continued unhappily, "I saw them in a window. Made me think of you,and about that time the seizure began. I tried to kid myself that I wasjust getting you a little token of--of my esteem, but the symptoms arealmost as bad as before already."
* * * * *
Apparently she refused to accept the seriousness of the situation. Hersmile was fatuous, he thought, kissably fatuous.
"Don't you realize what this means?" he demanded. "Peterson and Feldmanturned up a very distressing fact. Sulfa-tetradine deposits out in theendocrines, so a single dose is all a person can take. This relapse ofmine means we have it all to do over again."
"Think, Dr. Murt! Just think a minute," she urged.
"About what?"
"If the sulfa deposits out in the very glands it's there to protect, howcould you be suffering another attack?"
His arms ached to reach out and emphasize his argument. "I don't know.All I know is how I feel. In a way, this is even worse, because--"
"I know," Phyllis said and perversely moved close to him. "My relapsecame last Tuesday when I bought you a tie for Christmas. I sent a bloodsample over to Ebert Labs right away. And do you know what?"
"What?" Murt asked in a bewildered fog.
"It was negative. I don't have Murt's Virus." She slipped an arm aroundhis waist and put her head on his shoulder. "All I've got is Murthimself."
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